


all your desert songs (have brought us here)

by okayantigone



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief, Hallucinations, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-19 21:56:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14246562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okayantigone/pseuds/okayantigone
Summary: do not listen to him. the child tells lies.//or the one where kevin gets his pound of flesh from the master.





	all your desert songs (have brought us here)

**Author's Note:**

> i dont know a single thing about trials, courts, or the american legal system, and i frankly don't wish to know  
> i just needed something quick and angsty etc. enjoy.

“i don’t care about getting justice,” kevin had said quietly. “i care about getting even.”

 

today, he is functional and calm, righting the knot of his black tie, pinning it in place with the familiar weight of the gold pin riko gave him a few Christmases ago, engraved with his name in the back. he hasn’t had a drop of alcohol in months, and his hands are steady, as he fixes his cufflinks in place.

 

the man who looks back at him from the mirror is very much alive, cut sharply and handsomely, and his face is serious, but not grim. today, he is a man, missing his childhood best friend, a man, ready to confront a lifetime of violence. when he smiles, it is not the smile of a man who is alive at all. it’s the smile of the dead boy he loved.

 

 _i do not forgive you_ , he thinks. _not now, and not ever._

 

riko shrugs elegantly in the mirror and smiles. it’s not savage. it’s only a little sad. _i don’t want your forgiveness._ he always keeps his head a little to the side, tilting it, delicate and birdlike, to keep away the part of his face that was destroyed by the gunshot.

 

kevin isn’t unsettled by his ghost at all. riko had been dead the entire time kevin knew him. he had been dying since the first time he’d closed his chubby toddler hand around an exy stick. now it was just more practically true than metaphorically.

 

he steps out of the dorm. the suite is clear. andrew, and the rest don’t much like hanging around him these days. he’s okay with that. he’s okay with a lot of things. his hands don’t shake.

 

his car is waiting downstairs. it’s black, and sleek, and he slides into it with effortless grace. he and riko used to play drinking games on their ways to interviews, when tetsuji wasn’t around. the point was to get so fucked up, they couldn’t feel their faces, and then smiling, and laughing, and lying had been so easy.

 

today, he pops a single pill from his anti-anxiety medication, and washes it down with some cool, refreshing bottled water, and his hands don’t shake.

 

_“are you sure you want to do this?” wymack had asked. “you know i am going to support you. you know i will, but kevin – “_

 

he hadn’t wanted to hear it. riko is dead in the shotgun seat. his eyes stare ahead, and his face reflects in the glass, forever marred. kevin misses him like an open wound. the only reason this whole mess had taken so long, was ichirou dallying, taking his sweet time reappropriating tetsuji’s assets to more deserving moriyama cousins, but now he finally had the go-ahead, and he was going through with it.

 

 _“they will say you’re an attention seeker,” wymack had said quietly. “they will call you a liar, and a slanderer, and an insolent, ungrateful child. they will take your name, and they will drag it through the mud, and – “_  
  
“my name’s taken a lot of hits lately,” kevin had interrupted. “i can handle this too.” 

_“kevin – “_

_“don’t be a hypocrite. you’re almost making it sound like you don’t want me to testify against a notorious abuser, and i know that can’t be true, given that opposing the system is the main reason this team exists. this team, that might i remind you, is only still here because of me.”_

_“jesus, kevin. you know that’s not what i’m saying,” wymack sounds so defeated, kevin almost wonders if he can take his cruelty back. but lately being cruel is all he knows how to do._

_“he has to answer for what he did. he doesn’t get to just walk away from it. not when i’m still here, not when i can do something about it.”_

_“tackling tetsuji moriyama in the court of public opinion is – “_

_“is the least i can do.” kevin was resolute._

 

when he steps out of the car, he is blinded by the camera flashes. he rewards them with a tight reserved smile, tinged with grief. he and riko had an illustrious acting career ahead of them, after exy. once. but now riko was dead, and kevin couldn’t see beyond the crimson rage that tinted his vision every time he saw tetsuji’s hateful face on tv, defending himself, and offering half-baked milquetoast apologies. his hands don’t shake, when he walks into the courthouse.

 

he recognizes ichirou’s people, nods grimly at them. they’re here for his protection.

 

 _tetsuji moriyama’s abuse drove riko to suicide._ he rehearses the line in his head.

 

he places his hand on the bible and swears to tell the truth. the truth was always flexible with him and riko. it had to be, and now riko was dead, and no one else would ever know the things kevin knew. his hand was stable.

 

tetsuji is sitting in the defendant’s chair, flanked by stern-faced lawyers. he looks calm, and controlled. kevin’s fear is battling his rage, and he wonders if that’s how riko felt all the time too. when he meets the master’s eyes, he is suddenly calm.

 

_“you don’t get it,” he’d shouted at wymack, that night, months ago, when he’d first entertained the idea of testifying at tetsuji’s trial. “i know they don’t – “ he’d gestured wildly at the wall, meaning the foxes. “but i thought you might.”_

he talks about tetsuji’s cane, and riko’s careful hands. in the corner of his eye, he sees riko’s ghost, insolent, smiling that unsettled smile that kevin wishes he could stop remembering from their last few months.

 

_“he has to be stopped,” kevin gripped the neck of the bottle tighter, to stop his hand from shaking. “someone has to stop him, someone has to make him stop – i have to make him stop, i have to make him stop, no one else will, but i have to make him stop, make him stop hurting rik – “_

_wymack had crossed the room, pried the bottle out of kevin’s grasp, and pulled him in._

_“he’s stopped.” he’s said quietly. “whatever he did, kevin. he’s stopped now. riko is dead.”_

_kevin had looked up, his eyes bloodshot, and wet._

_“i know. and i am going to make him pay.”_

_“kevin – “ wymack sighed. “like i said. i will support you, whatever you do. i will make public appearances, and i will talk to the trustees. you are going up against a very dangerous man.”_

_“i don’t care. he killed riko. and he killed my mom.”_

the satisfaction spreading through his chest is hollow, when he brings it up. tetsuji had thought kevin would just repeat the same empty descriptions of the nest that lydia, and johnson, and engle, and all the rest of them had brought in. he hadn’t thought kevin would say that. he had not known that kevin knew.

 

riko told him. not this riko, who is grinning madly, with blood running down the side of his face, flickering in the courtroom lights. the real riko, alive.

 

_“you know he had her killed, right?”_

_“what?”_

_“my father. your mom. the master asked him to.”_

_“how do you – “_

_“doesn’t matter how i know. i just do. he had her killed, like he had mine killed. do you understand now? why i have to – “_

_“make them stop.” kevin had said quietly._

_“no. it’s why i have to win.”_

he manages to keep calm through his testimony. the delicately edited files that implicated tetsuji – him and no one else – in staging the fatal car crash that took kayleigh day’s life all those years ago have already been presented by his moriyma-bought lawyers.

 

he goes to the bathroom to splash cold water on his face. his hands are still.

 

riko is in his mirror, looking more and more glitchy. he’s fading.

 

_“will you stay to hear the verdict?”_

 

“i don’t care about the verdict.”

 

_“no?”_

 

“it’s over. you’re dead.”

 

_“don’t you want to know if you’ve won?”_

 

“winning was for you. i just wanted him to stop.”

 

riko nods resolutely, like hearing kevin say that has finally settled something for him.

 

in the hallway, he brushes shoulders with the man who raised him. he feels the chill through his body, his lips shaping a smile he wishes he could claw off his face. “i won.” he says quietly.

 

tetsuji nods. “so you did. do you feel any better?”

 

the chill is gone. his hands are still. “i don’t feel any worse,” he says honestly.

 

he walks out, and the moriyama security keeps the press away.

 

riko is not in the car. his hands are still. wymack is waiting for him on the sofa, with a bottle of vodka, watching tetsuji’s lawyers make a statement, as he’s dragged away in handcuffs.

 

 


End file.
